[ GAMEPLAY ]
At the end of Battle 2 (leaving the Mines), you now fight a boss
At the end of Battle 4 (leaving the Mushroom Forest), you now fight a boss.
Right now there are 4 (2+2) of these new boss fights for Flower Girl, and 2 new boss fights for Beetle Bane. They mostly use variants of existing artwork, but their powers also are somewhat extensions of those existing monsters. (There will be more monsters + bosses with unique art in the full game.)
Each of these 'mid-run' bosses have a legendary treasure chest to unlock. (Thus, like all legendary chests, guaranteed to have a rare or higher gacha.)
If you have unlocked depth 2 for both Beetle Bane and Flower Girl:
The Boss you fight at depth 2 and depth 4 depends on which "side" you are on the map.
Basically, they match to whatever boss is at the very bottom (Battle 6 boss).
So if Earth Mother is on the Right side, the right side for Battle 2 and Battle 4 will also be Beetle Bane boss fights.
I will eventually create some UI on the map to indicate this.
(Merchant currently randomizes between the 6 fights, but there are plans for more).
Minor stuff:
Flower Girl Boss at battle 6 also changed it's attack pattern slightly, now drops bombs too.
Gold Mace and it's handle have been reduced from Ultra Rare to Rare (Yellow -> Blue) and decreased price (20->16). I will keep reflecting on this item, it's one of the oldest in the game, so it might need more attention.
I'm truly sorry if this causes any new bugs or if they are too unbalanced. I've been playtesting, creating new profiles, etc, but something may have slipped by and I will patch it this weekend ASAP.
Just let me know in the feedback or on Steam Discussion boards, I read them basically everyday.
[ BUGS ]
I fixed one bug related to unlocking equipment via achievements, where it didn't show you the effect. (The level 2 upgrade is still unknown.)
There are some known bugs I'm going to hunt this weekend, like Bombs not making sound effects, and also a lot of UI improvements I hope to get to.
[ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ]
Sorry, I am still playtesting the "no 2 same coin/gem to unlock" system.
"Unsure if Beetle shield on Depth 3+ might be a trap for Beetle Bane. Wasn't relevant this run, but just a thought. I got beat up with poison in depth 2 already and had to switch builds."
This is a great point, I think I will likely change the Depth 3 for Beetle Bane. In earlier builds, Beetle Bane started with both Spear and Shield, even at depth 3+, so her runs were generally on the easy side. But now it's a bit harder to get it working. In addition, the demo is missing some poison-related items, so in general it's a bit trickier to use her shield effectively. Thank you!
"By graphics I really mean feedback, games like this thrive on combos feeling powerful when they happen and the audio visual impact of forging is fairly minimal. loving the art and game concept though. :)"
Thank you for letting me know. I think my current weakpoints as a dev also tend to be centered on feedback (UI + sound effects) and especially fonts. I will continue to try to polish the game in these aspects as I acknowledge it's an important part of the experience for many. Thank you for the encouragement.
"Was a bit harder this time. Not sure what to make of that."
Runs can vary quite a bit, especially with what shovels + gacha you get early on, but I try to keep the runs short enough that hopefully it's not a total waste of time. In the full game there are also more achievements, so that even a failed run can hopefully result in some fun stuff.
With the new bosses, the game may be even (slightly) harder. I arrived at this point based on feedback regarding the difficulty from players, but I do have to acknowledge it's getting pretty tough. For example my most recent Flower Girl run was depth 2 and I lost.
Generally, my goal is for Flower Girl depth 1 to be somewhat "easy" almost like an extension of the tutorial, but for depth 10 to be "slightly brutal". I think this will require a more revision, as the last thing I want is for players to be locked out of significant chunks of content purely based on difficulty.
"had a couple good things going but double click to sell was on by default and my broken corsair ended up selling like 3 ultra rare shovels. was a little frustrating."
Sorry about the UI / UX troubles. For whatever it's worth, I had comments from players in the past about how it was too easy to accidentally sell stuff, which is why I implemented double-click-to-sell and made it the default. But personally speaking, I also turn off this feature in "Menu -> Other" because I prefer one-click-to-sell as well. I'm still exploring what the overall ideal is, but I do apologize for the trouble.
"i REALLY think that this game could do with more expressive sound effects. im loving it right now and my first run was... Kirby game easy? so long as theres options for difficulty after a few runs my review is a solid 9.5/10 as of right now. id easily put a couple hundred hours in if it lets me.
this game, with some extra time and care could be on the same level for me as the binding of issac or slay the spire."
Of course, I love getting praise and the comparison to such amazing titles, so this comment made me super happy! Thank you! I will keep adding time and care to the best of my ability. For difficulty, there are options! Each time you start a run, you get an extra "depth", but this is not well communicated to the players. In the Demo, Flower girl has Depths 1 to 10, and Beetle Bane + Merchant have Depths 1 to 3. There's also different crates which change the rules, and I'd say some of those are slightly easier, and some are slightly harder (depending on character / build, which I hope is part of the fun). In the Demo there are 2 extra crates to unlock, and I'd say that "Gold Crate" is probably the hardest of the 3, but probably not the overall hardest crate.
I acknowledge the lack of sound effects and the need to improve there. I do hope to do so, and keep polishing the sound design. This, UX reactions, and fonts are perhaps my weakest areas that I will strive to improve on. (Localization being part of that too.)